1. Field
Certain aspects of the disclosure set forth herein generally relate to mesh networks and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus of implementing a body area network using a mesh configuration
2. Background
Body area networks (BANs), which involve wireless communication between multiple wearable computing devices, make possible applications such as wireless health monitoring or wearable computing. For example, in the healthcare domain, BANs may be used for continuous monitoring and logging of vital patient parameters. Thus, a patient suffering from a high risk of heart attacks would especially benefit from the use of one or more sensor devices placed on, or worn by, the patient and communicating through the use of a BAN because those devices may alert a hospital or health care provider of an impending or occurring heart attack by measuring changes in the patient's vital signs. Other applications of this technology may include the area of sports, military, or security.
Because of its simple hardware configuration and energy efficiency, ultra wideband (UWB) communication is often chosen for implementing BANs. However, UWB signals propagate poorly, if at all, through the human body. Hence, achieving reliable communications between distant, non-line-of-sight, BAN nodes is therefore difficult, often relying on diffracted paths (using creeping waves) or reflections of electromagnetic waves from external objects. If the user is in an environment that does not have many reflectors, such as the outdoors, the quality of the communication between the different devices placed on, or worn by the user will be very poor. For example, communicating signals from a device on a user's left wrist to a device on the user's right ear can be very difficult.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a more robust BAN implementation.